Wednesday, March 20, 2013

MARCH 4, 1837 – FAREWELL ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ANDREW JACKSON

1837 – FAREWELL ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ANDREW
JACKSON
Jackson was most responsible for not renewing the charter of the misnamed
Second Bank of the United
States, a private institution. In his
farewell address when leaving office (Presidents used to be sworn in during the
beginning of March for decades, now it’s mid January), he stated, “The immense
capital and peculiar privileges bestowed upon it [(Second National Bank of the
United States] enabled it to exercise despotic sway over the other banks in
every part of the country. From its superior strength it could seriously
injure, if not destroy, the business of any one of them which might incur its
resentment; and it openly claimed for itself the power of regulating the
currency throughout the United
States. In other words, it asserted (and it
undoubtedly possessed) the power to make money plenty or scarce at its
pleasure, at any time and in any quarter of the Union, by controlling the
issues of other banks and permitting an expansion or compelling a federal
contraction of the circulating medium, according to its own will.”